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15 posts from June 2011

Thursday, 30 June 2011

Today, Autodesk released an Update 2 for Civil 3D 2011. This update fixes several issues discovered by our customers (thank you all for your help) and our internal team. As always, please make sure you check readme file to get familiar with instructions for install as well as to familiarize yourself with what is being addressed in this update.

What is important to know is that this update applies to all language versions of AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 and installation of AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 Update 1 is required. One other thing is to make sure you are installing only version applicable to your version of installation (32-bit or 64-bit).

I spend a lot of time looking at the Subassembly Reference included with the help menu on Civil 3D. If you’ve never been there and looked, this reference tells you everything you want to know (and more!) about every subassembly available to you. When someone has a subassembly question, this is almost always the first place I turn to start diagnosing the issue – if you want to know if something’s misbehaving, you first need to determine what normal behavior is, right? So when a customer started asking me about optional points in the LaneOutsideSuper and LaneInsideSuper subassemblies, I immediately turned to the Subassembly Reference. True enough, I found the optional points, but absolutely no way to figure out how to enable them – there’s no magic switch. So what was I to do? A quick IM to Nick Zeeben, Civil 3D Product Manager, led me to the answer – see, Nick is still my corridor guru, even if he doesn’t really work with them much anymore. But being as awesome as he is, he still led me down the right path. Follow the jump to go down that path yourself.

Tuesday, 28 June 2011

Recently I worked what seemed like a very strange case in which a customer was unable to view their pipe networks in their template. All the normal places you would look such as layers, style, etc. all checked out fine. After a little more investigation, it appeared that this template had originated and/or been worked on in AutoCAD MEP.

As you may or may not know, MEP deals quite a bit with pipes and piping systems, so it it was strange that this issue only effected the pipes in this particular drawing. After a good conversation with one of our MEP specialists (thanks Josh Benoist) I learned that MEP relies heavily on the DISPLAYMANAGER to display their pipes as desired.

Being a Civil 3D user, I rarely venture into the Display Manager so this was basically uncharted waters. Sure enough, when I went in the Display Manager, the pipes and structures were unchecked under REPRESENTATIONS BY OBJECT in both Model and Plan views. Once checked, the pipe network now displayed as expected.

So although this may be a rare instance, it is another place to put on your checklist when troubleshooting drawings with display issues.

Thursday, 23 June 2011

Few weeks ago the Infrastructure Product Line Group announced that the Autodesk® Infrastructure Design Suites 2012 have been released to customers. What is Autodesk Infrastructure Design Suite?

Autodesk® Infrastructure Design Suite 2012 is a comprehensive solution combining the tools needed to plan, design, build, and manage infrastructure projects, all in a single economical and convenient purchase.

What you need to know if you have a Civil 3D and Infrastructure Suite mixed license environment and wonder which license Civil 3D will pull first.

Now, for this all to work as we described below we need be sure we installed the following hotfix DL17253046.

Without hotfix: If Civil 3D was installed as part of an Infrastructure Suites, Civil 3D will only pull a network Infrastructure Suite license. It will never cascade over and pull a Civil 3D network license. Likewise, if Civil 3D is installed as a point product (not as part of the suite), it will only look for a Civil 3D network license; if no Civil 3D licenses are available, it will not cascade over and look to pull an available Premium or Ultimate network Infrastructure Suite license.

If you have a mixed license environment (both Civil 3D and Infrastructure Suite licenses) and you prefer to utilize the Civil 3D licenses and reserving the Infrastructure Suites for the other suite products, you must install Civil 3D as a point product and not as part of the suite.

With hotfix: Civil 3D, regardless of how it was installed will try to pull point product Civil 3D license first and save the suite license for other products in the suite. If a point license is not available then it will pull Suite license.

If Civil 3D is installed prior to installing the suite, the suite installer will install only the other products and skip the installation of Civil 3D.

Wednesday, 22 June 2011

Sorry for the all caps up above, I was trying to prove a point. This one is short and sweet – have you ever had a problem importing points from an external file? Did your point numbers happen to be pretty high? I mean high as in the 4 billion range – that’s a 4 with nine zeroes after it. I haven’t – until a few days ago. A user sent in a point file with really high numbers, and they wouldn’t import. I had a hunch that the high numbers had something to do with it, so I spoke with some members of our development team about it. I’m about to get into a detailed math discussion, so you might want to learn more after the jump.

Monday, 20 June 2011

If when composing or editing a label style, you happen to notice that your preview window is blank, this may lead you to believe that there is a graphics card issue or possible corrupted installation. Typically this issue has nothing to do with either of those, but rather the naming (or renaming for that matter) of this folder:

These previews are stored as .DWG within these subfolders, so renaming them or any changes to the folder structure will cause the program to display a blank preview window. This is actually documented in the HELP menu within Civil 3D, but given the misleading nature of this issue it could lead down the wrong troubleshooting path. Enjoy!

Friday, 17 June 2011

Fatal Errors and crashes are never ending story no matter what software you use. While some crashes are due to memory issues, some others are drawing related, OS related. There were some posts written about it here on Being Civil such as How to Start Troubleshooting or The Art of Troubleshooting. Other crashes report some issues with components the program is installed with, issues with user profile, and so on.

There are many causes and each issue should be looked individually. If that ever happen to you we encourage you to send us the CER report with your e-mail address in it. But in many case you will end up being asked to provide us your drawing for investigation. It is very important to get the drawing out of picture when troubleshooting.

From my personal experience, and I believe many of you can relate, these crashes are in most cases drawing specific. So if you have Subscription send us your drawing and we’ll do our best to help. One customer did so and had his issue resolved quickly. This customer reported that, by just setting the style to show major and minor contours program crashed.

Wednesday, 15 June 2011

As most of you know, the Autodesk Civil 3D support team frequents the Autodesk Discussion Forums in an effort to reach out to even more end-users of our software. Frequently, it seems to become a game of “stump the chump” (which is pretty easy to do, considering the high caliber of users hanging out in the forums!)

A few days ago, I ran into a user who was looking to model a corridor where the curb gutter matched the slope of the lane. The issue wasn’t with superelevation, because the user was using a feature line as a vertical target for the edge of pavement. I could pull in superelevation, enter the flowline depth from horizontal, or manually key in a slope for the UrbanCurbGutterGeneral subassembly, but there is nothing that explicitly said “make the slope of the gutter match the slope, no matter what it is.” After thinking about it for a while (anyone who knows me knows that I can’t let go of a corridor puzzle) I came up with an idea, but I needed more information. Luckily, Customer Success Engineer Peter Funk stepped in and answered the question and was heading directly down the path that I was going. So without further ado, let’s dive into subassembly parameter references and see what they can do for us.